Barmy Burgers

Crash

Producer: Blaby, 48K £5.50 Author: G Capewell Sound and graphics are strong points of Blaby games and this maddening sesame seed bun of a game is no exception from its delightful titlecard onwards. You're presented with four platforms with the various elements of three hamburgers suspended from them. The task is to walk your chef over the ingredients which drops them level by level until they make up complete burgers; burger, cheese, lettuce and top half of the bun in that order. This would all be very simple were it not for the fried egg and two sausages which dog your footsteps. A blast of pepper will hold them up but there are only five blasts per life. The chef can move up and down the platforms using the ladders, but so can the pursuers. Each screen provides you with more eggs and sausages to chase. Three lives with points scored by releasing segments of the ingredients or squashing eggs and sausages between the falling burger bits. Addictive. Joystick: AGF or Protek and Kempston. Recommended.

Read it at Crash - The Online Edition

Crash

Producer: Blaby, 48K £5.50 Author: G Capewell Sound and graphics are strong points of Blaby games and this maddening sesame seed bun of a game is no exception from its delightful titlecard onwards. You're presented with four platforms with the various elements of three hamburgers suspended from them. The task is to walk your chef over the ingredients which drops them level by level until they make up complete burgers; burger, cheese, lettuce and top half of the bun in that order. This would all be very simple were it not for the fried egg and two sausages which dog your footsteps. A blast of pepper will hold them up but there are only five blasts per life. The chef can move up and down the platforms using the ladders, but so can the pursuers. Each screen provides you with more eggs and sausages to chase. Three lives with points scored by releasing segments of the ingredients or squashing eggs and sausages between the falling burger bits. Addictive. Joystick: AGF or Protek and Kempston. Recommended.

Crash

Producer: Blaby, 48K £5.50 Author: G Capewell Sound and graphics are strong points of Blaby games and this maddening sesame seed bun of a game is no exception from its delightful titlecard onwards. You're presented with four platforms with the various elements of three hamburgers suspended from them. The task is to walk your chef over the ingredients which drops them level by level until they make up complete burgers; burger, cheese, lettuce and top half of the bun in that order. This would all be very simple were it not for the fried egg and two sausages which dog your footsteps. A blast of pepper will hold them up but there are only five blasts per life. The chef can move up and down the platforms using the ladders, but so can the pursuers. Each screen provides you with more eggs and sausages to chase. Three lives with points scored by releasing segments of the ingredients or squashing eggs and sausages between the falling burger bits. Addictive. Joystick: AGF or Protek and Kempston. Recommended.

Personal Computer News

Lasting Appeal 2/5

Playability 2/5

Use Of Machine 3/5

Value For Money 2/5

Bob Chappell 2/5

NAME: Barmy Burgers SYSTEM: Spectrum (48K) PRICE: £5.95 PUBLISHER: Blaby Computer Games, [redacted] FORMAT: Cassette LANGUAGE: Machine code OTHER VERSIONS: None OUTLETS: Mail order and Sinclair dealers. CHEFS ON LADDERS Burgers are becoming as popular on the micro as on the High Street! Issue 43 saw our review of Mr Wimpy - possibly the definitive burger game. Here we take a look at another game from Blaby, which doesn't come up to scratch. This one has you fleeing from fried eggs and frankfurters. Sadly, the hero in this one moves so jerkily and unresponsively that he appears to have gorged himself on starch, rather than 100 per cent beef hamburgers. OBJECTIVES Faced with three disassembled hamburgers, your chef must stomp all over pieces of bun, lettuce and beef, so they fall down a level to create the finished hamburger. A fried egg and two frankfurters chase the chef in an effort to halt burger production. IN PLAY An excellent title page of a giant fried egg and frankfurter of quite human aspect is displayed during loading. This turns out to be the high-spot of the program. The screen displays an assortment of platforms and ladders, with the burger ingredients scattered around the various levels. Your chef is presented as a tiny, front-facing, stiff-limbed figure, with all the elasticity of a frozen scarecrow. On the move he merely leans to one side then the other, like Long John Silver on a bad day. When climbing ladders or moving onto a platform, the chef must be positioned spot-on or gets stuck. He's not very responsive to the joystick, making the game very frustrating, especially as the pursuers move quite quickly. Throwing pepper at the chasing frankfurters and egg is much more hazardous than it should be as it only works if hurled at the last possible moment ie when the pursuer is but a sausage-skin width away from you. With the slowness of joystick response, you are obliterated more than obliterating. If you do manage to shake the pepper at the right moment, the be-peppered object vanishes, only to reappear (temporarily frozen) at the side of the screen. These moments of inactivity seem to be erratic in duration. VERDICT A weak implementation of a good concept, despite the well-illustrated title page.

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Getting Started 9/10

Graphics 9/10

Playability 8/10

Value 7/10

BURGER TIME FOR FAST FOOD ADDICTS! It's about time someone started a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chefs' now that Burgertime is also available on a Spectrum. Once again our intrepid hero is faced with the daunting task of completing the hamburgers. The object of Burgertime, in case you've forgotten already, is to help the chef to make four burgers, which are displayed in layers on the screen and form walkways for the Chef. Walking over a layer makes it drop down onto the waiting bun below. You are chased around the screen by a vicious fried egg and a couple of mean sausages. Defence against meanies comes in the form of a pepper pot which has five shakes left in it. Peppering a nasty will paralyse it for a few seconds while you make your 'getaway. This version for the Spectrum features three burgers instead of four, but the screen layout is still good. The most annoying point about the entire game was the awkward layout of the movement keys. The game uses the cursor movement keys for control which can be confusing. There are no bags of fries to collect in this game. These are available on the original and are useful as they boost your dwindling supply of pepper. The version of this program currently available in the shops is version two, which has better graphics for the Chef, a title screen while loading and also a better routine for peppering. After playing version one, which we have in the C&VG office, there are a couple of things which I think should have gone in version two. Firstly, all action stops while a layer of burger drops down a level, which can be annoying. There is also an awful mistake in the spelling of the game title itself which remains on screen at all times while you are playing. When I phoned Blaby about this and asked whether it had been corrected, they told me that nobody had noticed it before and that I was the first to complain. Apart from all this, Barmy Burgers is a good game for any Spectrum-owning Burgertime fan. The cassette, from Blaby Computer Games, runs on a 48k machine and is available from W.H.Smiths. It costs £5.95.

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

SIX OF THE BEST FROM ARCADES Six new hi-res colour graphics games are lust out for the Spectrum from Blaby. The first is Killer Kong a version of the arcade favourite. It includes two hi-res screens with the usual features. You may also collect extra points by jumping up and snatching hamburgers! Next comes a game called High Rise Harry (48K). You are Harry and you have the job of rust-proofing iron girders that are patrolled by Rust Bugs. It includes three different screens and levels. Barmy Burgers is the title of the third game, a version of a C&VG favourite, Burger Time. The object of the game is to guide your Chef across all the ingredients to make up a super half pounder burger before the two sausages or fried egg catch you! You do have a helpful weapon - five sprinkles of pepper - which immobilises the furious food chasers. In Do Do you have to avoid getting stung by the Snow Bees. Sounds like Pengo to me - another C&VG favourite. You, the Penguin, slide ice blocks at the Snow Bees, but watch out they have long sharp stings which can shatter the ice. You carry an ace under your wing, as you can electrify the side walls and kill any bees which happen to be lurking on it. Right what's next? Lunar Lander?... not quite. Shuttle is the name of the game and the object is to guide your Shuttle-craft down to the surface of the planet Wexon and rescue the stranded patrol who's space ship has landed there. This must be done without colliding into the asteroid belt. Your mission ends when all of the stranded patrol have been rescued! Last, but not least, comes Confusion. You are a pilot of a spacecraft lost in a maze of corridors in space (naturally!) Your object is to thrust up and down the centre of the corridors turning and shooting opposing ships which would otherwise collide and kill you. You can obtain an extra bonus by entering an energy alley and collecting the pod, but get out as quickly as possible or you will be trapped by deadly missiles. All six games are available for the 48K Spectrum at £5.95 each from Leicester-based Blaby.